


Her Hands

by DinoDina



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hands, Love, Scars, Series 03 Fix-It: Children of Earth (Torchwood), Strangers to Lovers, Tenderness, it's about the hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinoDina/pseuds/DinoDina
Summary: In which the Year that Never Was is over and Tish needs to move on; in which the 456 are gone and Lois is not the same person. In which they are drawn together, and everything changes.
Relationships: Lois Habiba/Tish Jones
Comments: 14
Kudos: 15





	Her Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to iianto-jones for the prompt and idea and uhhhh  
> Tish/Lois fans here you go, I love you, please love them with me.

Tish had never been a science fiction fan. She preferred a sensible historical romance or coming-of-age novel, so when she found herself in a low-budget but terrifying sci-fi film, she wasn't familiar with the genre rules. Jack, as an immortal time-traveler with the good looks of a leading man, wasn't going to die—but was she?

Tish was convinced that she was. A slave on the Master's ship, alone and terrified. Freer than her fellow prisoners but forced to watch their suffering. No matter how Jack tried to protect her and the withered husk of the Doctor tried to divert the Master's attention whenever his ire turned on her, she couldn't get away. The UNIT guards were cruel either by volition or through blackmail; it didn't matter to her why. They taunted her, hurt her, forced her watch Jack's agonizing deaths and the Doctor's slow humiliation.

The Master called her to dine with him sometimes. She was unused to good food at this point, familiar with only the slop prisoners were fed, and the Master enjoyed watching her struggle to eat, to contain herself in the face of nourishment; he even enjoyed whenever she grew tired of his smirk, tried to attack him. He laughed as she scratched at his face, knocked him out and ran out the door, through the corridors of the Valiant.

The guards always caught her.

Once, she managed to feel the sun on her face on the outer deck before she was tackled down, chained up, and taken back to Jack. One of her fingers was broken then. Healed crookedly. Jack didn't pity her—was too familiar with Jones women to do so—but there was something in his face that Tish couldn't look at.

This wasn't her world. She had no combat or survival training, no knowledge of alien species, no medical degree. She wasn't Martha, traversing the world, fighting, hoping against hope that the Doctor's mad plan would work. She was just Tish. A has-been personal assistant. She saw her parents every week, was always pleased that they were in better condition than she was, was selfishly happy that they had to watch her suffer rather than the other way around.

And then...

Then, time turns back. And Tish is turned back with it. Her hair is different, neat, thicker. Her hands are unmarred, her fingers straight. She's not dirty and half-starved, her heart doesn't race whenever someone walks down the corridor of the Valiant—because she's not there anymore.

The Doctor saved the day.

Martha saved the day.

Her younger sister, who used to tease Tish and steal her dolls. Who bothered Leo about sharing his legos when they were younger, who now calls him to stay on top of his classes rather than distracting him from homework because she wants someone to play with.

Tish looks at Martha and sees her baby sister, yes, but she also sees a fighter.

She is so unbelievably proud.

Because Martha doesn't wake up in the middle of the night screaming, not how Tish wishes she could do. It was terrified out of her because neither she nor Jack could afford the guards checking in on them more often than they did anyway. She wakes up in a cold sweat convinced she's still on the ship, and goes out to the kitchen—sometimes she sees Martha there but more often she doesn't. She's happy. Martha shouldn't have to deal with this.

She does, Tish knows. Differently. She has UNIT, a way to target her rage and feelings of uselessness into saving the known world. Tish has the cooking classes she recently enrolled in, the comfort of making something beautiful and delicious from nothing, the warmth of classmates around her, all of them interested in the same thing.

She doesn't like being alone anymore.

She doesn't have to be.

But even in the large, bright teaching kitchen, windows all along its sides—so different from the Valiant, open and free—Tish feels alone. The kitchen fades away sometimes, not into the Valiant but into nothingness. She's alone, not lost but not included—her classmates laugh and she doesn't because... well, they don't understand, do they?

And there's nothing Tish can do to make them. Not that she _wants_ to.

But sometimes...

Sometimes, Tish feels so lost knowing that she lived through a year—a _year_ , she remembers being five and waiting with bated breath for her birthday, thinking time was passing too slowly—and no one can tell.

She doesn't look older. Perhaps she acts older, but she was unable to get back in touch with her old friends. She didn't have any friends who weren't from work, anyway, and now that she doesn't work, she doesn't see them. None of them put the effort into getting in touch.

She looks down at her hands, sometimes, which were callused from labor and scarred from punishments, at her fingers, some of which healed wrong, and sees smooth skin and a single small burn on her palm from the one time she forgot to put on a glove when checking the oven.

Nothing else.

She wakes up alone in the flat she shares with Martha, sometimes, because her sister is at work, and can't remember if the year truly passed. She thinks it did, she _knows_ it did, but did it really? If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did it really fall? Of course it did. There was just nobody to document and mourn it.

The documentation on Tish's body is gone. With time reversing, what is there to mourn?

Tish desperately craves for a sign that she went through _something_ , and seeing all the things that were fixed when time was reset—life, existence, peace, ugly architecture, annoying neighbors, sweet, tangy oranges—feels so selfish.

* * *

Lois was always an athletic child. In theory, at least. Her parents pushed her into academic excellence but always told her to pursue her dreams; Lois compromised by focusing on studying and playing in her free time. She was on the football team until she quit at fifteen to focus on university prep, she ran around with the neighborhood children until her mum implied that her time could be better spent elsewhere.

She is let free from a UNIT prison and curses herself for her old choices. She was never indecisive, but never assertive enough when it mattered—just enough to distinguish herself against other job candidates, to show initiative but not challenge employers.

And the one time she _did_? She committed treason.

All in all, Lois would say that the past few days have been educational. She knows how bare and cold prison walls feel. How constricting and humiliating handcuffs are. What shame feels like as it runs down her back—shame at her actions, then at her superiors' cowardice—and how pride and truth in the face of death and treachery can make her stand tall without regret.

She knows what it's like to be owned by the government, to be an unnamed prisoner. She doesn't know how long she was in the cell. The time is blurred, grey, cold, terrifying. She looks at the calendar and can't make sense of anything between the time she took shorthand notes while spying on Thames House and the time Agent Cooper and Captain Harkness led her out of the UNIT compound.

Lois always liked certainty.

Despite the brain fog and the sudden trauma responses she finds herself acting upon in the middle of the store in the weeks following the disappearance of the 456, Lois looks at the world with too much certainty now.

She knows who would sacrifice the world to save themselves, and who would sacrifice themselves to save the world. She knows the names and faces of all those prepared to let the world burn to preserve their power. Looks around, and doesn't see that same knowledge.

How can the world just _forget_ what happened?

It's what draws her to Torchwood when Agent Cooper comes to her door with recruitment papers and a statement that begins with, "I know you don't want to, _but_..."

There is no _but_. Lois not only wants to, but needs to.

She finds herself in Cardiff, sitting in a temporary office and looking around at the remainder of Torchwood. Agent Cooper runs the place, deferring to Captain Harkness when he asks—he never asks, and the haunted look in his eyes is only lightened whenever he sees Agent Jones, who comes in to give them all coffee.

She's not the only new hire. There's Agent Davidson, who was a PC until a few weeks ago, and while Lois can barely remember her old self, Agent Davidson still seems to see the good in the world. He's always there with a poor joke or an overeager offer to help, and he never pushes Lois when she denies his offer to get a drink after work.

Sometimes she says yes but more often she declines—he's not trying to do anything, just to make her feel welcome on the team, which is funny because he's as new as she is, and yet he isn't. He's not as haunted and seems even newer, somehow younger, but there's something about the way he talks to Agent Cooper that tells Lois she doesn't have the full story.

She doesn't need the full story. Agent Davidson—"Please, call me Andy, I sound fifty years old when you say that!"—will tell her when she needs to know, and given now much he likes to talk, it's going to be sooner rather than later.

 _He_ doesn't need the full story, either, which is why Lois keeps him around. He doesn't ask why she goes into the next room when there's a video conference with UNIT, or why she never goes into the field. He doesn't ask about the marks around her wrists that she still expects to heal, from handcuffs that were just a little too alien in origin to be painless.

No one knows what she went through, not even the rest of Torchwood because unlike them, she wasn't _ready_ for this, she didn't sign up. Being athletic but never getting the chance to act on that desire, Lois's body is free of marks save for the small scar on the bottom of her foot where she tripped over a sharp rock at the beach once. So she's surprised that the marks on her wrists never quite go away, and she hates her hands for being a constant reminded of those shadowed days.

* * *

Tish visits Cardiff for the first time when Martha tells her she's finally leaving UNIT. She's not leaving the aliens behind, just switching cities, and she understands if Tish wants to stay in London—

Which is when Tish cuts her sister off and asks when they're leaving, if Mickey will handle moving the furniture or if his muscles are just there to give Martha something to ogle. It's her prerogative as an older sister to tease, she reminds the two when they protest, and none of them comment on the unusual living arrangement they're planning.

Her _mum_ comments on it, of course, because while it might be proper for Martha and Mickey to have a chaperone, she had so hoped that Tish would be able to find her footing again. Tish placates those sentiments with a cake but they don't quite leave her thoughts.

She _should_ be over it.

She isn't.

And there's nothing she can do about it.

Tish comes to Cardiff not expecting a new start but hoping for _something_ , and something comes in the form of an inconspicuous office that houses Torchwood in its depths. An attractive woman sits at the front desk, a phone and computer in front of her, and her face lights up when she sees Tish.

"I'm Lois," she says, standing, one hand outstretched in greeting, "I'm going to show you around, if that's alright?"

Because Lois is nothing if not prepared. Knowing that two new Agents are coming—Agents Smith and Jones, as if this is some spy flick—she researched them and memorized their photos and information, further learning about Agent Jones's older sister, who had a sealed file at UNIT... which, when open, revealed a gorgeous photo.

She was going to visit Torchwood often, Lois was told, and was prepared to greet her.

She isn't prepared for the flip her heart does when they first meet eyes, nor the laughs Tish Jones forces out of her during the brief tour.

Tish's eyes stray to Lois's wrists but she doesn't comment—she notices but she doesn't judge, doesn't jump to conclusions: her voice stays the same and her smile doesn't grow strained.

And when Tish shrivels into herself at the closed-off space Torchwood occupies, Lois hurries the tour along without drawing attention to the reason.

Tish doesn't feel _seen_ , exactly, but there's something there that wasn't before, that she doesn't get with anyone but Martha—and Martha is in pain too, yes, but it's _different_. She traveled with the Doctor, she was a UNIT operative, she was a doctor, she's a Torchwood operative now—she can deal with a fast-paced, dangerous life, and Tish _can't_. And it's not _fair_.

And Lois… Lois jokingly explains that she was a civilian until a few weeks ago, that she still doesn't understand how the archives are organized and hasn't memorized all the alien species there are in Cardiff.

She learns Tish's coffee order, though, and the next time she visits, makes sure to have it ready, warm and sweet.

Not even Martha knows this order. Tish maintains that it's not as sweet and girly as her old coworkers used to tease her, and that caffeine isn't worth it—the benefits don't outweigh the bitterness.

Lois melts when she hears it, the quiet, conspiratorial tone Tish takes with her as they sit on a bench outside the office building, sharing too-sweet, under-caffeinated beverages, because Torchwood has ears everyone and she doesn't doubt that hearing such slander against coffee would spur Agent Jones straight into the heart failure he miraculously avoided weeks ago.

Tish blushes at Lois's gentle laughs and lowers her face closer to her takeout cup, hiding her smile—just on this side of coy—and letting the cup warm her against the budding autumn chill.

* * *

Lois hasn't ever met anyone quite like Tish. How someone so sure and gentle can be so brittle, how someone so hurt can be so kind, how someone so confident can be so unaggressive...

She falls in love without even knowing it, between coffee breaks and park visits, as they exchange flowers and go on bike rides outside the city, while they laugh and talk and cry, once, late into the night, sharing fears and doubts and pain.

She holds Tish's soft hands and looks at her straight fingers and kisses them. Kisses the pads of her palms, the angles of her joints, the edge where her thumb meets her wrist. Holds her tightly and gently, runs her fingers along the back of Tish's hand, teases her with a touch that is almost a tickle, massages the muscles that are tense after a long day of kneading dough, rolling out cookies, or decorating cakes.

And Tish falls in love just as slowly, just as deeply, like walking along a flower-covered meadow that tilts down as a grassy hill before she even notices in. The grass is knee-high and she is gone, gone, gone, lost in Lois's eyes and laugh and warm embrace.

She lets herself be held and holds in return, sitting on Lois's couch after a long day, blankets around them, a film playing in the background and the remains of a warm dinner in front of them.

They're not holding each other, not really, but their legs are intertwined and Lois's hands are in Tish's lap, and she takes one of them, holds it between her own. She lifts it, massages it, around the palm and fingers, smoothing tightness brought on by typing and filing, then down her wrist, not moving around the scars, not giving them special attention.

Holding her hand, sharing her pain, reminding her that it's over.

It's not gone, will never be gone—and just as she is reassuring Lois of the fact, Tish struggles to remind herself. Because she's here, she's safe—whatever nightmares they've been through are gone, are still real, but are merely memories. _This_? This is real. Is concrete, is safe. Is love.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! <3


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